Dysphagia Research Society 2018 – DRS x SSC (SNL)

The Dysphagia Research Society hosts an annual meeting for those obsessed with swallowing research, this year in Baltimore, MD. The Swallowing Systems Core was out in force, happy to present our recent work and to visit with our friends, colleagues, and contributors. Please join us in congratulating members of our laboratory who presented this year, either giving a poster or oral platform presentation. We look forward to DRS 2019 which will be held in San Diego!

Alicia Vose, the most senior doctoral student under Dr. Humbert, gave two oral presentations on topics of great interest to both researchers and clinicians in attendance. First, she spoke on both a study examining clinician and patient accuracy when training a novel swallowing maneuver with either submental surface electromyography, videofluoroscopy, or both. Her second talk was about developing and validating a scale to classify patterns of airway protection with greater specificity than has been possible previously.

Michele Singer is a doctoral student under the mentorship of Dr. Humbert and gave a poster presentation entitled “Changes in swallowing mechanics before and after lung transplantation”. Her project is important in addressing the dearth of swallowing research in lung transplant patients, with a unique dataset of pre- and post-surgery swallow studies.

Alayna Ernster is another doctoral student under the guidance of Dr. Humbert and presented her novel and exciting work on “Cross pathway transfer between the ankle and tongue”. Her poster tied in well to other presented talks on motor learning.

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Alycia “Aly” Rivet is a doctoral student under the mentorship of Dr. Humbert as well and presented her poster on “Swallowing lingual pressure replication in healthy young and older adults”. Stay tuned for more work reported from “the lingual study”!

Melissa Miller is an SSC-raised clinician who currently works at the VA hospital in Gainesville, Florida. She brought to DRS her master’s thesis work on “Validation of the normalized laryngeal constriction ratio in normal and disordered swallowing”, a novel means by which airway compromise can be objectively measured.

Renata Guedes, Ph.D., completed a post-doctoral rotation with Dr. Humbert and worked on a study examining the effect of financial reward on healthy adults’ ability to complete a novel swallowing maneuver. We were so thrilled to spend time with our Brazilian Science Sister and listen to her presentation on this study.

Wendy Liang completed her clinical fellowship with Dr. Humbert and completes research under her mentorship. While not an SSC-affiliated project, we were proud to support her in having previous work presented by a colleague. Their poster was titled “Swallowing Event Sequencing: Comparing Healthy Older and Younger Adults”.